December 08, 2004

How we work: Scott McNealy, entrepreneur

In 1997, McNealy banned the use of Powerpoint at Sun because it clogged disks, bandwidth and brains:

We had 12.9 gigabytes of Powerpoint slides in storage on our disk drives. Ha ha ha. It freaks me out just to think about. Do you how many person centuries that is? Of clip-art manipulations? I banned Powerpoint from our company - I just edicted it. [...] if I just gave everybody overheads, you know, blank Mila overheads with all the free pens they wanted - I could drive productivity through the roof, as opposed to having - I mean you've all seen these overheads that have 14 pieces of clipart, 13 fonts, right hand justified, spell-check, 13 colours and you know your employee is exhausted by the time it finally comes off the printer. And do they communicate anything? No.

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Character Appearance Sally Brown has blond hair with bangs She wears pink or blue dresses with matching colored socks and she also wears white shoes General traits Sally has flipped blond hair with a cluster of curls and sometimes a bow in front and she wears a polka dot dress usually pink or light blue In the winter and most of the time in the later years of the strip she switched to a shirt and pants She has a take it easy approach to life preferring to slide by while doing as little work as possible Her favorite pastime is sitting in her beanbag chair watching TV In a series of strips from 1982 Sally actually went to beanbag camp which consisted of nothing but lazing around in beanbags watching TV and gorging on junk food and returned home fat She can be stubborn sometimes and is usually convinced she s right until someone proves her wrong but she also has a good heart and a strong moral sense like her older brother she is extremely sensitive to the unfairness of life Charlie Brown usually goes to Lucy in her psychiatric booth when he s feeling depressed but Sally prefers to confide her troubles to the school building which is very protective of her and will drop a brick on anyone who doesn t treat her nicely In the later years of the strip Sally also frequently developed new philosophies on life which were typically short sayings or phrases with little or no philosophical value such as We ll always have Minneapolis a take on the famous line We ll always have Paris from the film Casablanca Who cares Why me and How should I know One time Sally declared that her new philosophy was simply the word No which was to be her answer to every question from that moment on but then Charlie Brown caught her off guard with a question to which she responded Yes leading her to grumble You ruined my new philosophy The late 1990s Broadway revival of You re a Good Man Charlie Brown made reference to this with a new song for Sally portrayed by Kristin Chenoweth called My New Philosophy Sally in school Sally has a lot of trouble with malapropisms both in speech and writing for examples violins breaking out rather than violence breaking out or controversial French instead of conversational French in the latter example once Charlie Brown pointed out Sally s error she lost all interest in taking the class One of the strip s running jokes is the unintentionally humorous school reports she gives at the front of the class which are frequently inspired by malapropisms and end with her feeling humiliated as all of her classmates laugh at her Some of the more memorable reports she has given over the years include Santa and his Rain Gear Handbidextrous people and The Bronchitis a dinosaur which supposedly became extinct from coughing too much or her report on the oceans of the world then proceeding to state that there are no oceans in individual landlocked states in the U S She often struggles with homework despite Charlie Brown s patient efforts to help her and she has a particular dislike for math which she largely finds both intimidating and incomprehensible However she has expressed interest in becoming a nurse once she becomes an adult although this is due to her interest in wearing white shoes as opposed to the job itself Relationship with Linus Sally is in love with Charlie Brown s best friend Linus and her infatuation with him first began on August 22 1960 while her character was still a toddler Early on Linus took on something of a mentor role to Sally teaching her about the ways of the world tutoring her in the New Math and even on one occasion demonstrating to her how to use a security blanket In an early strip published soon after Sally s birth proud brother Charlie Brown found Linus doing some complex calculations of the sort usually associated with physicists When Linus had finished covering a whole wall with these calculations he asked Charlie Brown if Sally would go out with him once she was older However when Sally began to follow him around and it became obvious that she liked him Linus was visibly uncomfortable and began to try his best to get rid of her She calls him her Sweet Babboo inspired by Schulz s wife Jeanie who used to call him that and when Linus says something Sally finds especially witty or intelligent even or perhaps especially if it s an insult she ll express her admiration by asking Isn t he the cutest thing Her crush is a frequent source of embarrassment to Linus but he endures it stoically for the most part although he is sometimes driven to yell in exasperation I m not your Sweet Babboo On one occasion Sally also referred to herself as Linus Sweet Babbooette to which Linus responded I ve never heard of a Babbooette As Schroeder does with Linus s older sister Lucy Linus often attempts to fend Sally off with a sarcastic remark No matter how vigorously he protests though her devotion remains unwavering However in one of the animated episodes she treated Linus with an air of indifference which resulted in him growing jealous much to her enjoyment However Linus is not immune to Sally s wrath Sally often regards Linus belief in the Great Pumpkin with scorn more than once as in It s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown she has joined him to sit in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin only to become disappointed and angry with Linus when Snoopy shows up Sally is also disgusted with Linus security blanket habit and on several occasions has actually yanked his blanket away from him declaring that no future husband of hers would hold a blanket Sally also sometimes becomes so frustrated with Linus ignoring her romantic overtures that she resorts to physical violence or tries to get Charlie Brown to hit him One Valentine s Day when Linus failed to come through with the valentine card she had been expecting Sally demanded that her big brother punch her Sweet n sour Babboo in the nose however this resulted in Charlie Brown hitting Lucy by mistake when Lucy walked into his fist Another time when Linus told her that if he ever got a valentine from her he d throw it in the trash Sally retaliated by clobbering him with her lunch box Using Snoopy as his lawyer Linus decided to sue Sally for the assault only to have Snoopy drop the case when Sally threatened to throw his supper dish over the fence Sports Unlike most of the Peanuts gang Sally does not seem to have much interest in playing sports On the rare occasions when she does play it s usually because Linus invited her She is one of the few kids in the neighborhood who has never played on Charlie Brown s baseball team and her attempts to play catch with a football usually lead to comic results She is frequently seen sledding downhill in a cardboard box with Linus and she did join a snow league once when the local adults turned snowman building into an organized sport but her team wasn t very good They lost one match when the referee penalized them for improper mittens and lost another because their snowman was offside Relationship with Charlie Brown and Snoopy Being Charlie Brown s sister she refers to him as big brother having called him by his full name only on very rare occasions and usually only in her early years in the strip Charlie Brown doted on her in the beginning and was usually very patient with her Yet Sally has never developed proper respect for her big brother and invariably ends up disappointed in him when he fails to protect her from being teased or threatened by bullies However Sally constantly relies on Charlie Brown to help her with her homework which usually results in his doing her assignments for her For his part Charlie Brown is often frustrated by Sally s laziness and her reluctance to do the right thing when she finds herself in a difficult situation His attempts to lecture Sally usually either go over her head or simply fall on deaf ears however in one episode in which she lied to her teacher about stealing a crayon Charlie Brown became very upset with her and when Sally said that If a lie works it isn t a lie Charlie Brown screamed at her in an uncharacteristically angry voice an instance which would have done Lucy proud GEORGE WASHINGTON wherein Sally burst into tears and sobbed that she would never lie again As for Charlie Brown he stands firm saying that although he hated to do that he felt he had no choice Some problems call for a drastic action Lots of times when Charlie Brown is gone for a long time such as fifteen minutes she moves into his room Like Lucy Sally does not care that much for Snoopy and often calls him a stupid beagle Sally usually complains when her big brother asks her to feed Snoopy whenever he is away from home Still Sally occasionally enlists Snoopy s help in school assignments she even treated him to an ice cream cone a very tall ice cream cone with scoops of about a dozen flavors when Snoopy helped her get an A on a report about Our Animal Friends Sally also once used Snoopy as a weapon to help protect her from bullies on the playground Snoopy would bark loudly at anyone who threatened Sally leading Snoopy to comment I feel like a can of mace but this ended in disaster when Snoopy saw an old girlfriend of his and ran off to meet her abandoning Sally and leaving her to get slaughtered by the playground bullies History Sally was born on May 26 1959 with Charlie Brown receiving a telephone call from the hospital and dashing out of the house yelling in joy that he had a new baby sister Linus and Lucy happened to be standing nearby and saw him run out causing Linus to remark to Lucy You didn t act like that when I was born She was given the name Sally a week later on June 2 Although much talked about and the cause for a celebration that included Charlie Brown passing out chocolate cigars it was not until August 23 1959 that she finally made her first appearance As a baby Sally liked playing with empty baby bottles which she used for everything from building blocks to bowling pins and being taken out for walks The latter caused poor Charlie Brown no small amount of frustration when he had to miss an important baseball game to walk her around the neighborhood in her stroller He ended up leaving her to return to the game due to the pleading of his team and in typical Charlie Brown fashion quickly lost the game incurring the wrath of both his mother and his teammates Like other characters such as Linus and Schroeder who were also introduced to the strip as babies Sally grew up quickly On August 22 1960 she took her first steps and in the next day s strip she fell in love with Linus for the first time Her first day of kindergarten came on September 5 1962 Although the first glimpse of her new school made her run away screaming she had a wonderful day once she got there Unfortunately her lack of aptitude for formal education quickly became apparent as she nervously admitted in a later strip that she was sure they d make her go through kindergarten again because she had failed flower bringing Nevertheless she did eventually complete kindergarten and settled in at about first or second grade age for the remainder of the comic s run Portrayals Kathy Steinberg was the first to voice Sally Brown in 1965 Various actresses had voiced her since Hilary Momberger voiced her from It Was a Short Summer Charlie Brown 1969 A Boy Named Charlie Brown 1969 Play It Again Charlie Brown 1971 Snoopy Come Home 1972 You re Not Elected Charlie Brown 1972 There s No Time for Love Charlie Brown 1973 A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving 1973 Lynn Mortensen voiced her from It s a Mystery Charlie Brown 1974 to Be My Valentine Charlie Brown 1975 Gail M Davis voiced her in Race For Your Life Charlie Brown 1977 In It s Flashbeagle Charlie Brown 1984 and Snoopy s Getting Married Charlie Brown 1985 and the 1985 version of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show Sally was voiced by Stacy Ferguson from Kids Incorporated who later gained fame as Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas Ami Foster from Punky Brewster voiced her in Snoopy The Musical 1988 and This is America Charlie Brown 1988 1989 In It s Christmastime Again Charlie Brown 1992 Sally was voiced by Jodie Sweetin from Full House Kristin Chenoweth played Sally in the 1999 Broadway revival of the musical You re A Good Man Charlie Brown winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress The character of Sally did not appear in the original musical she replaced Patty from the original production who had long since disappeared in the comic strip In this revival Sally was also given a new song specifically written for her character titled My New Philosophy In an interview printed in the introduction to The Complete Peanuts 1971 1972 Chenoweth noted that Sally was her favorite character due to her adult sense of humor and that Charles M Schulz had sent her flowers after she won her Tony Award and had told her she was born to play Sally External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to Sally Brown Sally at Snoopy com v d e Peanuts Characters Charlie Brown Charlotte Braun Sally Brown Franklin Frieda The Great Pumpkin Kite Eating Tree Little Red Haired Girl Marcie Patty Peggy Jean Peppermint Patty Pig Pen Schroeder Shermy Snoopy Snoopy s siblings Linus van Pelt Lucy van Pelt Rerun van Pelt Violet Gray Woodstock Minor characters Films A Boy Named Charlie Brown It is a 1972 political drama based on a novel with the same title, written by Irving Wallace (The Second Lady (1980), The Celestial Bed (1987).
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